Quite honestly, the sea scares the crap out of me. Give me any horror film, with a few exceptions of the odd supernatural flick, any day of the week. Perhaps it’s having relocated back to the UK after a tsunami, or having to endure watching The Abyss with my dad at a young age, who knows. Whatever the reason, that made me edgy almost immediately about SENARA: The Sacrement, from Influsion Inc.
The unknown and uncertainty of what you’re facing is always the worst, especially if you have an active imagination. When you awake on board a massive ship that’s transporting a religious group on a mission, the captain reaches out to you, advising that there’s a problem and everyone has abandoned the ship. Just how much did you drink last night? They ask you to come find them, and that’s when our adventure begins.
SENARA: The Sacrament is a first-person survival horror mostly about unlocking paths, conserving ammo and uncovering truths. As this write-up is based on the demo build, there can’t be too much I’m giving away. While I finished this excellent demo, the narrative and events may be subject to change, though the premise remains: the religious group on board are a cult with nefarious motivations.
I predominantly played the game on the Steam Deck without any issue whatsoever, and it was a looker – so much so that I wanted to experience it on my desktop for a better representation. A huge ship, the actual corridors are claustrophobic, and there’s a continued menace throughout, without ever facing anything more scary than a locked door.
Though it looked great, there were some apparent glitches with yellow objects that kept flashing white. Actual spoiler: these items are breakable once you locate a knife and are absolutely essential to survival. Smashing a pot or toolbox will reveal money, health syringes and ammo, which is typically three bullets at a time! Saving, locating and purchasing ammo is definitely secondary to your main mission of uncovering the intentions of the cult.
In short, the captain dangles a carrot that secures your escape from the ship, provided you retrieve some valuables for him. Your character reveals that he is an ex-marine (hence the title reference that this resembles the film Under Siege, minus the aikido and stupid ponytail). Then again, the crew and passengers are all Korean, so it could be national service. Regardless, being able to wield a gun plays an important part once you locate it, as, would you believe it, there are…things on the ship with you.
I genuinely liked the puzzle elements of smashing through a grate to reach another area (similar to the recent Synthesis of Corruption) and using the onboard maps to unlock rooms or solving keycodes with imagery, but the combat was tricky. From the beginning, you collect Won that appears to be a basic collectable until you locate a vending machine that dispenses ammo and health. The former is essential as the enemies in the game usually take four hits to the head, and each clip has about three bullets. I couldn’t tell you how much I missed enemies and ended up shooting around them, wasting valuable ammo.
Even the SENARA: The Sacrement looks the business, the enemies looked terrible – like angry raisins. That’s my only criticism at this point, as it didn’t spoil the experience, but they did look silly. During the SENARA: The Sacrement demo, there were only a couple of NPCs to interact with, but this was generally engaging and had me wanting more. I will say that the trailers do make it seem a bit more frantic than it is, as if it were GoldenEye. That’s not the case in the demo. Combat becomes frequent, but the core part was following the objectives of pulling switches, pressing buttons, and retrieving artefacts.
It’s interesting as you literally run out of space early on as the only real estate is the ship; however, I found it compelling and invested in its premise. There’s a little bit of a Still Wakes The Deep vibe and Amazon’s The Rig direction. I say that as when the SENARA: The Sacrement demo ends, you’ll be wanting more and speculating where it’s going to go once you walk through those doors…
Give the demo a playthrough during the Steam Next Fest.
